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- HISTORY IN THE MAKING
- (book review)
- by Randall Hillebrand
-
- . The first question that needs to be answered here is what is
- history?
-
- There are many definitions for the word history. One of the
- simplest definitions probably is that "History is just one darn thing
- after another." Another definition might be "things in the past."
- Swanstrom's definition though takes more into account. First of all
- he says that the definition of history needs to state that history is
- the record of significant events. Otherwise everything would be
- considered history such as the different times that Pope Gregory the
- VII sneezed.
-
- A second thing that Swanstrom takes into account in his
- definition of history is that historical events are not things that
- happen on a regular basis such as daily or weekly, etc. (i.e. a
- holiday). So this aspect of a historical event would then be stated
- as something that is generally unrepeated. There is one other part of
- the definition of history and that is the fact that history itself
- cannot be studied.
-
- To actually study history, a person would need to
- be able to travel back to the time of the event. Since this is not
- possible in this life, then all we can do to uncover as close as we
- can what actually happened is to study the records from that time in
- history. Then what is the definition of history? History is a study
- of past records of significant and generally unrepeated events.
-
- . The next question that needs to be answered is what is the job of
- a historian? The job of a historian is many. They must first define
- what period of history they are going to study. When this is decided,
- they must next search out primary and secondary information (either
- documents, artifacts and/or people) from that period of time. Once
- they have found the information covering that period in time, their
- next step would be of assimilating that information and then
- formulating it into as complete, accurate and unbiased form that they
- can.
-
- . A couple of questions may arise from my last statement when I use
- the words complete and unbiased. The first question may be, "How will
- I know if the the historian was complete in his study or not?" The
- answer to this would be that you would not know unless you took the
- time and effort to study the subject yourself. Either doing the same
- type of research that the historian did or by checking his work
- against a number of other historians who have studied the same events.
-
- When the historian does his research, he needs to decide what is and
- is not important. Being human, as all historians are, they could make
- a mistake and leave something of importance out. On the other hand,
- they could purposely leave something out to make the time in history
- they are writing on look differently than it actually was. The second
- question that you may have is, "Can a historian truly be unbiased?"
-
- No they cannot. A historian cannot be totally unbiased, even if he
- decides to report strictly the cold hard facts. This is because he
- must determine what the cold hard facts are which in itself is a
- biased process. But this brings up another controversy in what the
- work of a historian should be. Some feel that a historian should
- report the cold hard facts so that his readers can make up their own
- minds.
-
- But others think, as does Swanstrom, that the historian should
- comment on the significance of the events in study. Swanstrom feels
- that the historian, a person who probably knows more about the event
- than anyone else living, should give his reader the benefit of his
- knowledge on the subject by giving them his conclusions that he has
- reached after the long years of his study. Swanstrom also said,
- "Furthermore, bare facts about the past, without any comments
- concerning their significance - without any admiration or blame,
- without passion - tend to be lifeless and dull, sometimes even
- meaningless."
-
- . How Christianity affects the work of the historian will be dealt
- with next.
-
- The Christian historian Swanstrom says will look at
- history through Christian glasses. What he is saying here is that
- Christian historians will look at history from a Christian
- perspective. When they look at the past they will see the hand of God
- working throughout the history of mankind. This also gives the
- Christian historian a definite advantage over the secular historian in
- that when the Christian historian comes to a period of time that deals
- with Christianity (much of the last 2000 years), he will better be
- able to understand what they were thinking, feeling, hoping for, etc.
-
- Or when he studies a man like Adolf Hitler, he can walk away knowing
- how and why a man could do what he did. He can know that it is more
- than just wanting to raise up a superior race and to illuminate a
- perceived inferior people, but that the total depravity of man and the
- work of Satan against God's chosen people was also involved.
- Secularists say that the Christian perspective makes our glasses very
- tinted and that we only see things from one perspective, which of
- course is wrong if it differs from the way in which they see things.
-
- But of course Christians can make the same claim about the secularist
- historian in that they see history through a secularly tinted set of
- glasses in which they do not see the work of God in man's history.
-
- . Other ways in which Christianity affects the work of the
- historian are as follows. The Christian historian should belabor the
- area of absolute truthfulness when presenting a piece of research. He
- needs to be sure that he does not present history in such a way that
- history says what he wants it to. Also, the Christian historian
- should never distort the truth of history in an attempt to further the
- cause of Christ. This would be lying and opposed to the teaching of
- scripture.
-
- Another way in which Christianity should affect the work
- of the Christian historian is through his value judgment of history.
- Especially in this day and age, people judge things by their personal
- standards. The Christian, as well as the Christian historian, needs
- to make value judgments based solely on the word of God and nothing
- else.
-
- . My personal reaction to the book was a positive one. Not ever
- having studied history with much interest (or many other academic
- subjects) until becoming a Christian, I was not aware of the many
- things that need to be considered in the area of historical research
- or in the study of history itself until having read this book. I was
- very surprised to see the evangelical stand taken by Swanstrom in this
- book. From my limited exposure and understanding of the majority of
- historians that claim the title Christian, they are usually liberals.
-
- So to see this strong stand for the Word of God made the book that
- much more credible to me. Again being limited in my understanding of
- the area of history and the writing of history, this book seemed to me
- to be very thorough in its coverage of the subject though not very
- indepth in each topic discussed. But I felt that the book
- communicated well the subject matter in the pages it was given and
- would highly recommend it.
-
- This would have been a good book for me to
- have read before taking American Church History and Evangelism. I
- suppose that is one reason why Church History is a prerequisite to the
- former mentioned.
-
-